Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Behind the Design of the Denise Shawl

Denise Shawl Knitting Pattern PDF - $5.00 

Now I've shared with you my notes from the actual construction of the shawl, but I also wanted to give you some sneak peaks behind the design of this shawl.  I started out with the idea that I wanted to use a twisted braid lace design.  I did some sketches on how I could orient it into a triangular shawl.



Next I started drawing out the lace pattern in excel.  I drew out a skeleton of the YO's that I wanted and then added decreases around the pattern.  


I wanted to check out the decreases were working, so I knit a swatch of each of the three sections.  You can see my markings and corrections in the paper above.  


Finally, I knew that I wanted there to be some fun points at the end of the shawl.  I also wanted to fill in the end with a bit more design for the edging.  In the following swatch, I tried out some additional "V's" versus diamonds.  (I ended up going with the V's.)


Of course, Indy was very interested in every step of this process.


This shawl was really fun to design, but it was even more fun to knit.  Why don't you purchase the knitting pattern and try it out yourself?